strategy+business, March 14, 2023
by Theodore Kinni
Photograph by PeopleImages
After New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern unexpectedly announced her resignation on January 19, the lead on CNN’s analysis read, “Burnout is real—and it’s nothing be ashamed of.” Indeed.
It would have been more surprising if the PM had, as she described it, “a full tank, plus a bit in reserve for those unplanned and unexpected challenges that inevitably come along.” After all, she led New Zealand through a series of major crises, including the covid-19 pandemic and the Christchurch mosque shootings, which were the worst terrorist attacks in the country’s history. She endured extreme abuse online and received an unprecedented number of personal threats—so many that she may be the first ex-PM in New Zealand to require high levels of security. And she became a parent while PM, giving birth to a daughter, now four years old.
Going by The Burnout Challenge, by Christina Maslach and Michael Leiter, Ardern’s five-year-plus run as PM was a perfect storm for burnout. The authors should know. Maslach, who is professor of psychology emerita at University of California–Berkeley, created the Maslach Burnout Inventory, the first and leading burnout assessment, in 1981. Leiter, who was a professor of organizational psychology at Australia’s Deakin University and held the Canada Research Chair in Occupational Health at Acadia University, has been researching burnout—and collaborating with Maslach—for almost as long. Read the rest here.
It would have been more surprising if the PM had, as she described it, “a full tank, plus a bit in reserve for those unplanned and unexpected challenges that inevitably come along.” After all, she led New Zealand through a series of major crises, including the covid-19 pandemic and the Christchurch mosque shootings, which were the worst terrorist attacks in the country’s history. She endured extreme abuse online and received an unprecedented number of personal threats—so many that she may be the first ex-PM in New Zealand to require high levels of security. And she became a parent while PM, giving birth to a daughter, now four years old.
Going by The Burnout Challenge, by Christina Maslach and Michael Leiter, Ardern’s five-year-plus run as PM was a perfect storm for burnout. The authors should know. Maslach, who is professor of psychology emerita at University of California–Berkeley, created the Maslach Burnout Inventory, the first and leading burnout assessment, in 1981. Leiter, who was a professor of organizational psychology at Australia’s Deakin University and held the Canada Research Chair in Occupational Health at Acadia University, has been researching burnout—and collaborating with Maslach—for almost as long. Read the rest here.
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